Karin Slaughter - Fractured

Will Trent was certainly an enigma. The way he had spoken to Warren in the interrogation room had been so intimate that Faith found herself unable to look him in the eye. Had all of that really happened to Will? Was he the damaged product of the state adoption program, just like Warren Grier?

What Will had said about the cigarette burns had felt so real. Under the jacket and the vest and the dress shirt, was he hiding similar scars? Faith had been in central booking when they took the photographs of Warren's damaged torso. As a police officer, she had seen many cigarette burns on many victims as well as suspects. They were unsurprising at this point, the kind of thing you expected alongside the tattoos and the track marks. People did not generally choose a life of crime for the adventure. They were junkies and criminals for a reason, and the reason usually could be found in their early home life.

Was Will just a really good liar? When he talked about what it felt like to touch the burn marks, was he speaking from experience, or making a calculated guess? Three days had passed since she'd first met the man and she knew as much about him now as she had on that very first day. And she still did not understand how he worked the job. Warren had tried to kill him, but instead of sticking the younger man in with pedophiles and rapists, Will had walked him down to the cells to make sure he got one to himself. And then there was Evan Bernard. Any cop worth his salt knew that the best way to sweat out someone like that arrogant prick was to stick him in with the nastiest motherfuckers on the cell block, yet Will had basically given him a pass, sticking him in with the shemales.

Faith figured it was too late in the day to guess his strategy- and besides, it wasn't as if he ever consulted her on anything. He kept all the details of the case locked up in his head and maybe, if Faith was lucky, he let some of it out when the mood struck him. He worked like no other cop she had ever met. There wasn't even a murder board in his office-a chronological listing of what happened when, who did what, the suspects and the victims pictured side by side so that clues could be tracked, leads could be followed. There was no way he could keep it all in his head. Maybe he kept it all on his precious tape recorder. Either way, if something happened to Will, there would be no logical point for the next lead investigator to pick up on. It was such a blatant disregard for procedure that Faith was shocked Amanda allowed it to happen.

Analyzing Amanda and Will's relationship was just wasting time. Faith went back to the computer, her hand resting on the mouse. The screen flickered up, showing a photograph of Warren Grier's bookshelf. Faith hadn't put it together before, but she found it pretty odd that a man who could not read would have books in his home.

She squinted her eyes at the titles, then thought better of it, giving her eyes a break and clicking the button to zoom in on the photo. There were several graphic novels, which made sense, and what looked like manuals for various pieces of office equipment. The spines were all sectioned together by color rather than title. The books on the bottom shelf were taller, the words blurred from being out of the camera lens's center frame. Faith guessed from their size that they were art books-the expensive type that you put on your coffee table for show.

Faith zoomed in closer on the bottom shelf, but still could not make out any of the titles. Something was familiar about the thick gray spines of three of the books. She put her chin in her hand, wincing at the pain from her bruised jaw. Why did the spines look so familiar?

She opened one of the boxes from Warren's apartment, looking to see if any of the books had been packed. They all seemed to contain papers and receipts from over the last ten years. Faith skimmed through the stacks, wondering why in the hell Will had taken all of this crap from the scene. Was it really necessary for them to know that Warren had paid a hundred ten dollars to Vision Quest for an eye exam six years ago?

More importantly, why would Will waste Faith's time asking her to go through stuff that was basically trash? She felt her irritation building as she skimmed page after page of useless documentation. Faith could understand why Warren would keep all of this-he would have no way of knowing whether or not it would be important one day, but why would Will want it catalogued into evidence? He didn't strike her as a needle-in-a-haystack kind of person, and with Bernard and Warren behind bars, there were certainly better uses to make of her time.

Slowly, Faith sat up in her chair, holding the dated bill in her hands but not really looking at it. Her mind flashed on different scenes from the last few days: Will reaching for the directory at the dorm even though the sign clearly said it was broken. The way she had found him at the school yesterday morning, his head bent over the newspaper as he touched his finger to each word on the page. Even at Evan Bernard's house today, he had thumbed through every page of the yearbooks rather than simply turning to the index and looking up the man's name, as Faith had done when she'd found the photograph of Mary Clark.

Two days ago, after Evan Bernard's insightful diagnosis that the abductor was functionally illiterate, Faith had had but one question: How can someone get through school without learning how to read and write?

"It happens," Will had told her. He had sounded so certain. Was that because it had happened to him?

Faith shook her head, though she was only arguing with herself. It didn't make sense. You had to have an advanced degree to get into the GBI. They didn't let just anybody in. Barring that, every government agency functioned on mounds and mounds of paperwork. There were reports to fill out, requisitions to be filed, casebooks to be submitted. Had Faith ever seen Will fill out anything? She thought about his computer setup, the fact that he had a microphone. Why would he need a microphone for his computer? Did he dictate his reports?

Faith rubbed her fingers into her eyes, wondering if lack of sleep was making her see things that weren't there. This simply was not possible. She had worked with the man almost every hour of the day since this whole thing started. Faith was not so stupid that she missed something that glaringly obvious. For his part, Will was too smart to be bad at anything so basic.

She looked back at her computer screen, concentrating on the books Warren had stacked along the bottom shelf. Questions about Will still pulled at her thoughts. Could he read the titles? Could he even read the threatening notes that had been slid under Adam Humphrey's door? What else had he missed?

Faith blinked, finally realizing why the three books on the bottom shelf looked so familiar. Here she had been questioning Will's abilities when an important piece of evidence practically glowed right in front of her.

She pulled out her spiral-bound notebook, looking for the phone number she had scribbled down at the school this morning. Tim Clark answered the phone on the third ring.

"Is Mary there?"

Again, he seemed reluctant to let his wife speak to the police. "She's taking a nap."

She was probably exactly where Faith had left her, staring into the backyard, wondering how she was going to cope with her memories. "I need to speak to her. It's very important."

He sighed, letting her know he wasn't happy. Minutes later, Mary came onto the line. Faith felt bad for thinking her husband was lying. The woman sounded as if she'd just been woken from a very deep sleep.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you."

"Doesn't matter," the woman said, her words slurring. Faith didn't feel so bad when she realized Mary Clark had obviously been drinking.

"I know you don't remember the name of the girl Evan was accused of raping back at Crim," Faith began. "But remember you said he had an alibi?"